: ' " T HE NIGHT \V ArCHMAN," a fa s c in a tin g, il11- perfect short novel by Simonne J acque- mard (published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston, in a translation by L. D. Emmet), won the Prix Renaudot in France the year before last, when j\mericans were reading an English nove] on a similar theme-((The Col- lector," by John Fowles. Both books concern a }oung man who abducts a young WOl11an, locks her in a cellar, respects her chastity, and lets her die of neglect. Both authors connect their protagonists' inability to make love wIth their destructiveness, but this debt to I..Iady Chatterley's husband is the only other thing the books have in common. Mr . Fowles lets the killer and hIs victim tell their own stories, and calls the reader's attention to English class relationships. Miss J acquemard places Siméon Leverrier socially-he is a night watchman-but gives him no role in the struggle of classes. His vic- tIm scarcely exists for him or for us, and his story is unfolded in a series of short passages written in various styh s and arranged out of chronological or- der. Mr. Fowles chips off the eÀcess from his narrative to shape a core; 1\1iss J acquernard chips at the narrative to get the f rag men t s sh e wants to use. Some of her frag- ments are primarily visual (a srllall-town street on a rainy night) and cinematIc rather than painterly, for they are accompanied by noises ( an old gate opening) if not speech, and they linger over gestures ( Lever r i e r taking off his gloves) with the deliberation of man} modern films. Other fragments are aural, too-local gos- . . . SIp; an examInIng mag- istrate asking Lever- rier for a confession or an extenuation. The spoken passages, like the cinematic ones, are catalogues of banal- ities Among the other fragments with which BOOKS T alleys of tlze Slzadow the author explains the night watch- ulan, piecing together his character with brilliant economy, are bits of his diary-a bitterly funny record of petty thefts, humiliations, and sketches for lunatic sCIentific projects. And she studies his acts, sensations, and ideas as he works In secret to dig out a collapsed well in his garden. (Eventually he digs down to the remains of an ancient Roman bath; by that tinle he has for- gotten all about the sIlly salesgirl he has picked up, lured home, and imprisoneJ. "Thile he digs, she dies. ) Mostly, Leverriel is an uncouth, nast) nut. But the passages about his descent and dIs- covery transform him into a hero, for he has a hero's experience-not Or- pheus's or Dante's but a more barbanc one. a descent into the underworld that survives in folk and fairy tales about tumbling into the trolls' kingdom. This kingdom is not the treasure he unearths (a stone carving, for instance); it is an unsharahle vision, from within the earth, of death dnd burial as transmuta- tion, of ((buried cities" that turn into ((cities of amethysts, with houses of opal- ine and tenlples of crystal and obelisks of sulphur and rubellite." Leverrier's kingdorll IS a statempnt of the unity of nature, as Shakespeare put it in ((Full fathom five" and \\Tordsworth "- " \: ... THINKA8LE ).<< ""...' . :",',. r :':',,"' ,,' ". \"':. .' x-;; , "=".;.:......: '., . '. .-.: -:..: .::; :<=-:- '.......':". ] 13 put it in ((A "lumber did my spirit sea1." Miss ]acquen1ard's prose-a gorgeous, romantic, spooky collage of roots, j ew- els, stones, and bones-is far more ornate than these poems but hardly less affecting. Her catalogues of banalities are, I think, employed as a dull frame to set off her hero's splendid vision; the me- diocrity of Leverrier's surroundings fixes hirll among the fated nohodIes- swineherds, shepherds, dnd runaway children-who get swallowed up by the earth in fairy tales. Unfortunately, the portentous scrutiny of banabty has become a fashion in contemporar) art, even an artistic banality. Miss ] acque- mard demonstrates her intelligence in the way she makes use of this routine. It is in Leverrier's vision and in his diary that she demonstrates the force of her imagination and the originality of her style. G EORGES SIMENON'S ((The Bells of Bicêtre" ( translated b) ] ean Stewart and published by Harcourt, Brace & "Torld) invites comparison with Eric Hodgins' recent ((Episode," for both books deal with a man who suf- fers a stroke and recovers. In :vIr. Hod- gins' admirable work of nonfictIon the patient was the author; in Simenon's t r' ' ':"k"";1 ;..: ..;..c.4"-- " ". %, ' 1:1 '-" .11. 't' ,# r: { - <Ø ;.. ..: 1. ..".. -.'" ... ........- u. ......'\ I UHm (NKABlE Sk ......... .... . """ ." .: .... *:. tI . .,; : , ... ^ , """" '. . t. (, f' ' '>. N<- .p , .'Y * ..,..